This season marks the 10th anniversary of Monse. To celebrate, Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim took over the UOVO Art Storage facility in Long Island City, which, apart from holding priceless art works for collectors around the world, is also where the pair store their Monse archive. “We come here all the time to look at it,” said Kim. “We wanted to do it here.” But Garcia also found parallels with some of the other artists possibly found within its walls. “There is something about what we do, Laura and I, that is Picasso-like; distorted but familiar. Deconstructed and happy is basically us in a nutshell.”
The models walked through four “viewing” rooms, each lined with a handful of paintings. (While there were no Picassos on view, the room where I was sat included works by Thea Djordjadze, Andreas Breunig, and Mihai Olos among others; all from the collection of UOVO founder Steve Guttman, and hand-picked by Garcia.) The soundtrack kicked off, simply, with the sound of waves crashing, and ended with “Kokomo.” “When we started thinking about making a 10th anniversary collection, we wanted to make sure it reflected the beginning of the company,” Garcia explained. “We were such huge fans of scarf prints and that joyfulness of going on vacation.”
The looks that opened the show, however, were not beachy, but their classic deconstructed take on workwear staples. A cropped jacket, meant to look tied around the waist, paired with low rise trousers with a faux sarong-like tie definitely felt like the best of both worlds. But they did make it to the beach, via striped cotton poplin shirts that had quite the marinière feel—including a shirtdress with a print of a fisherman’s net across the chest. That net begat crystal chain draped tops, skirts, and dresses, and then later, an ensemble of a fisherman sweater embellished with pearls in a dégradé pattern, worn with a draped pearl mini-skirt. Then there was a brief stop in preppy territory, with striped knit polos and dresses, until we finally arrived where it all started—a scarf print inspired by a bandana but filled in with seafaring emblems instead.
This season the duo expanded their leather offering, including a small satchel and a bigger tote with a trompe l’oeil layered bag effect—imagine two tote bags, one inside the other, and then imagine you cut down one side of the outer later and you fold it back. A skirt modeled after the new bag design was one of the groovier pieces in the collection. The inspiration, however, came from an unexpected place: Fresh Direct Bags.“At home when I drape and work, I usually don’t have fabric yardage so I use whatever’s home,” Kim explained, showing off a photo she had texted Garcia, holding a mockup made from the grocery delivery bags. “Which is kind of funny because that’s how Monse started: we cut up all of Fernando’s clothes.” They both laughed. “It’s why he has no more jackets left.”